Stories do not need every detail of what you’ve tried
Reports and presentations should tell a story
Planning out your report/presentation can help
Hold the audience’s attention with what needs to be said; do so effectively
Tell your audience why they should care; why it matters
You should explain your choices and the “why”
Choose informative titles
On presentations: Balance b/w short and informative (goal: concise)
Avoid: “Analyzing NHANES”
Better: “Data from the NHANES study shows that diet is related to overall health”
On visualizations: emphasize the take-home! (what’s learned or what action to take)
Avoid: “Boxplot of gender”
Better: “Twice as many females as males included for analysis”
Avoid: “Tickets vs. Time”
Better: “Staff unable to respond to incoming tickets; need to hire 2 FTEs”
Effective Oral Communication
Brainstorm: Advice You’ve Been Given?
Student responses
Advice you've received
Speak loudly and clearly enough for everyone to hear (project your voice!); be engaging so that people are inclined to pay attention
Make eye contact with your audience as you speak
Don't just read off slides, and (most of the time) don't read from a script
loud and clear voice
Posture, eye contact, and mannerisms can all influence oral presentation performance. While presenting don't stand in one spot, get up, move around and engage with the audience.
try harder to better word choice
Look at the audience when I am talking to them. Speak loud and clear.
Eye contact!!!
eye contact, try not to use filler words, talk slower than you would normally, don't just read off of the slides
dont overcomplicate the wording, what might make sense to you might be revolutionary to someone else. Using simple words for simple explainations for begginer simple thought processes
drink water constantly
making enough eye contact
Presentations are for listening
Advantage: words to explain out loud what you’re showing
You are presenting for the person in the back of the room.
To accomplish:
don’t read directly off slides
repetition is ok: tell what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them
use animation to build your story (not to distract)
introduce your axes
text/labels larger
watch your speech speed
practice!
For Example: A Happy Ending for (almost) everyone in Little Red Riding Hood
Red Riding Hood (RRH) has to walk 0.54 mi from Point A (home) to Point B (Grandma’s)
RRH meets Wolf who (1) runs ahead to Grandma’s, (2) eats her, and (3) dresses in her clothes
RRH arrives at Grandmas at 2PM, asks her three questions
Identified problem: after third question, Wolf eats RRH
Solution: vendor (Woodsman) employs tool (ax)
Expected outcome: Grandma and RRH alive, wolf is not
Little Red Riding Hood
Effective Written Communication
Brainstorm: Advice You’ve Been Given?
Benefits of written communciation
Your audience has time to process…but the explanation has to be there!
Visually: more on a single visualization
Yes, often there are different visualizations for reports/papers than for presentations/lectures.
When you have time to digest (read)
❓ What makes this an effective visualization for a written communication?”
Do read it over before sending/presenting/submitting
Aside: Citing Sources
When are citations needed?
“We will be doing our analysis using two different data sets created by two different groups: Donohue and Mustard + Lott, or simply Lott”
“What turned from the idea of carrying firearms to protect oneself from enemies such as the British monarchy and the unknown frontier of North America has now become a nationwide issue.”
“Right to Carry Laws refer to laws that specify how citizens are allowed to carry concealed handguns when they’re away from home without a permit”
“In this case study, we are examining the relationship between unemployment rate, poverty rate, police staffing, and violent crime rate.”
“In the United States, the second amendment permits the right to bear arms, and this law has not been changed since its creation in 1791.”
“The Right to Carry Laws (RTC) is defined as “a law that specifies if and how citizens are allowed to have a firearm on their person or nearby in public.””
Reminder: You do NOT get docked points for citing others’ work. You can be at risk of AI Violation if you don’t. When in doubt, give credit.
Footnotes in .Rmd
How to specify a footnote in text:
Here is some body text.[^1]
How to include the footnote’s reference:
[^1]: This footnote will appear at the bottom of the page.
Effective Visual Communication
Brainstorm: Advice You’ve Been Given?
The Glamour of Graphics
builds on top of the grammar (components) of a graphic
considerations for the design of a graphic
color, typography, layout
going from accurate to 😍effective
Left-align titles at top-left
😬 Accurate
ggplot(penguins, aes(x = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme(axis.text.x =element_text(angle =90, vjust =0.5, hjust =1))
😍 Effective
ggplot(penguins, aes(x = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme(axis.text.x =element_text(angle =90, vjust =0.5, hjust =1),plot.title.position ="plot")
Avoid head-tilting
😬 Accurate
ggplot(penguins, aes(x = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme(axis.text.x =element_text(angle =90, vjust =0.5, hjust =1),plot.title.position ="plot")
😍 Effective
ggplot(penguins, aes(y = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme(plot.title.position ="plot")
Borders & Backgrounds: 👎
😬 Accurate
ggplot(penguins, aes(y = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme_bw() +theme(plot.title.position ="plot")
😍 Effective
ggplot(penguins, aes(y = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme_minimal() +theme(plot.title.position ="plot")
Organize & Remove/Lighten as much as possible
😬 Accurate
ggplot(penguins, aes(y = species, fill = species)) +geom_bar() +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme_minimal() +theme(plot.title.position ="plot")
😍 Effective
ggplot(penguins, aes(y =fct_rev(fct_infreq(species)), fill = species)) +geom_bar() +geom_text(stat='count', aes(label=..count..), hjust =1.5, color ="white", size =6) +scale_x_continuous(expand =c(0, 0)) +scale_fill_manual(values =c("#454545", rep("#adadad", 2))) +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme_minimal(base_size =18) +theme(axis.text.x =element_blank(),plot.title.position ="plot", panel.grid.major =element_blank(), panel.grid.minor =element_blank(),axis.title =element_blank())
Legends suck
😬 Accurate
ggplot(penguins, aes(y =fct_rev(fct_infreq(species)), fill = species)) +geom_bar() +geom_text(stat='count', aes(label=..count..), hjust =1.5, color ="white", size =6) +scale_x_continuous(expand =c(0, 0)) +scale_fill_manual(values =c("#454545", rep("#adadad", 2))) +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme_minimal(base_size =18) +theme(axis.text.x =element_blank(),plot.title.position ="plot", panel.grid.major =element_blank(), panel.grid.minor =element_blank(),axis.title =element_blank())
😍 Effective
ggplot(penguins, aes(y =fct_rev(fct_infreq(species)), fill = species)) +geom_bar() +geom_text(stat='count', aes(label=..count..), hjust =1.5, color ="white", size =7) +scale_x_continuous(expand =c(0, 0)) +scale_fill_manual(values =c("#454545", rep("#adadad", 2))) +labs(title ="Adelie Penguins are the most common in Antarctica", subtitle ="Frequency of each penguin species studied near Palmer Station, Antarctica") +theme_minimal(base_size =20) +theme(axis.text.x =element_blank(),plot.title.position ="plot", panel.grid.major =element_blank(), panel.grid.minor =element_blank(),axis.title =element_blank(),legend.position ="none")
Additional Guidance
White space is like garlic - take the amount you need and triple it